"You mentioned in a recent webinar that boards, human resources departments, and others with oversight are rarely helpful in these situations.
Those are enabling systems. It's not just that behaviors are going on—these systems are in play. That's significant for people to know, because people move through these experiences blaming themselves, thinking that they're not doing enough. Really, it's the enabling systems. I use the term enabling for a reason: if you're familiar with substance overuse circles, people who are enabling think they're helping, but they're actually doing things to continue negative behavior. Enabling systems are systems that you would think were designed to help, but they inadvertently prolong or continue the experience of workplace abuse or neglect.
Leadership, overwhelmingly, is cited as an enabling system. You go to your leader and think, if I tell my leader, then they'll do something and stop it. But leaders generally have been shown to be most often the perpetrators of the workplace abuse and neglect. It might be a leadership style, authoritarian or toxic leadership, or even just not leading. I call them laissez-faire leaders. Perhaps you have a leader who's never there, who dismisses your complaints—radio silence."
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